Quiet Perfection
by MandyJane
Summary: Astoria Greengrass is emphatically not a typical pureblood girl - so why on earth did she end up with Draco? A little oneshot of her thoughts before her wedding...


**A/N - Bonjour, mes amis :) This is again a little oneshot, this time about Astoria Greengrass, as I percieve her. I do think that Draco would have changed a lot after the Final Battle, so this isn't too OOC (fingers crossed!) Please leave a review, as I'm looking forward to hearing what you think...**

Let's get one thing straight, at the beginning; I am _not _your average pureblood girl. I hate all the convoluted rituals, the complicated robes, the stupid etiquette. I prefer to be anywhere but a ball or posh dinner – but unfortunately I don't often have the option. True, my upbringing has given me a lot of advantages: I can speak French fluently, I have access to enough books to learn whatever I want, and I've never been without anything material. But I've also missed out on a lot: I've never climbed a tree, or been swimming in anything but a pool, or met a guy my own age who wasn't rich and in Slytherin. I have been shockingly pigeonholed by the world as a spoilt princess girl who is grasping, avaricious and a little bit dim. And I didn't like it.

So I set out to prove them all wrong. First of all, I was sorted into Slytherin, which put a damper on my plans as I was hoping for Ravenclaw. But I didn't let that stop me – I worked hard throughout my time at Hogwarts, studying everything I could. Professor Snape actually gave me a Time-Turner so that I could fit in extra classes and homework. I never once fell behind in anything – I was a model student. I didn't have many friends because of all the work I was doing, but I didn't really want any at that point. All the people in my house were shifty and hard to pin down. I got the feeling not that they were lying, exactly, but that they were never telling the entire truth. So I made friends with a Hufflepuff girl in my year, Pippa Clarke, a muggleborn, and we ended up being really close. She isn't here today – in the final battle she was mauled by a werewolf and she dies shortly afterwards. I cried for weeks.

I searched for her the entire night, after the battle. I was so worried. She swore that we would stick together – we were going to hole ourselves up in a Transfiguration classroom with some other kids in our class and just fight off anyone who came. I had hoped that my sister, Daphne, would join us, but I learnt afterwards that she had joined the other side shortly before midnight. We had never been close, but it hurt that she would be so weak as to betray us all that badly. But anyway, Pippa got lost in the fighting, when one of our walls exploded, and I lost sight of her. Eventually I found her again, the next morning, lying crumpled against one of the greenhouses. She was hardly recognisable, her pretty face marred by bright bleeding gashes across it. I didn't really take in the entire scene, just her, so I completely missed the tall boy kneeling by her and trying to save her.

I'm told that I fainted at that point, but not before screaming loudly enough that everyone nearby rushed over. The next thing that I remember is waking up in the Great Hall, sprawled across the boy who tried to save Pippa. His arms were wrapped around me and my head was resting on his chest, and I felt incredibly safe in that moment. The feeling stays with me now, when I wake up with him next to me. It's honestly the best feeling I've ever experienced. We stayed together the whole day, even though they tried to take him away. I convinced them that he was leaving soon enough, so they all left us alone.

His parents both went to Azkaban within a week, like all the other Death Eaters. When the Dark Lord died, the Marks dissolved, so no-one ever knew that he had been branded. We concocted a plan, to run away from it all, but we couldn't follow it through. When we realised that the Wizarding World was too busy recovering to persecute us, we decided to stay. When I left school we bought a little house just off Diagon Alley and we sold Malfoy Manor and Greengrass House – I believe that they were both destroyed soon afterwards. I was glad, in a way. Two places that held such evil should not have been allowed to continue to exist.

And after a few years, when I was twenty-two, he proposed. Quietly, without fuss, in our cramped kitchen. I had been in a hurry to get to work, and he was just standing there looking at me blearily and holding out a little gold ring set with a little purple stone….I never got to work that day. I paid for that later, in overtime and snide comments, but it didn't seem to matter quite as much.

And now I'm here, one year on, in our own little house in a white dress. My parents would hate it if they were here – Witches generally wear bright colours for their weddings – but I like this Muggle custom. Apparently for them it signifies purity, but for me it seems more like a fresh start. That's what we had, Draco and I. A fresh start.

It's going to be a very quiet wedding. We only have a very few people here, and we've told hardly anyone. We intend to live our whole life quietly, under the main radar, so that no-one can every single us out again and decide that we should suffer for his part in the War. I want children, I think every girl does at some point, but Draco doesn't. He has an unholy fear of becoming like his father. Maybe if I 'accidentally' get pregnant He'll change his mind….

I suppose it's time now. At least, the music has started. I think I'll have a good life. I can't imagine anything else with Draco. Every day will be lovely: quiet, nice and never over the top. It's exactly what I want. The opposite of pureblood society. Quiet perfection.


End file.
